Nobel Prize Winner 2024: The winners of the Nobel Prize for the year 2024 have been announced. This year, three scientists David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their outstanding contributions to predicting and designing the structure of proteins. Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, Heiner Linke, has said that this prestigious award has been given to honor his research establishing the relationship between amino acid sequence and protein structure. The chairman of the committee said, “This was considered a major challenge in chemistry and especially biochemistry for decades. That is why he is honored today for its discovery.”
Amazing work in protein world
Nobel laureate Baker currently works at the University of Washington in Seattle. Both Hassabis and Jumper work at Google Deepmind in London. Baker designed a new protein in 2003, and since then his research group has created one imaginative protein after another. The Nobel Committee said that these also include proteins that can be used as pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials and small sensors. “The variety of designs they have and the number of designs they have created and published is really amazing. It seems you can make almost any kind of protein with this technology,” said Professor Johan Aquist of the Nobel Committee.
'Infinite possibilities for humans'
The Nobel committee said Hassabis and Jumper have created an AI model capable of predicting the structure of nearly all 200 million proteins identified by researchers. Linke said scientists have long dreamed of predicting the 3D structure of proteins. “Four years ago in 2020, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper managed to crack the code. With the skillful use of artificial intelligence they made it possible to predict the complex structure of any known protein present in nature,” Linke said. One of the scientists And the dream is to create new proteins so that we can learn how to use nature's tools for our own purposes. “That's the problem David Baker solved,” he said. “They developed computational tools that now enable scientists to design spectacular new proteins with entirely new shapes and functions, opening up endless possibilities for humans.”
Reward of 11 million Swedish krona
Last year the Chemistry Prize was awarded to three scientists for their work on quantum dots. This year, the announcements of Nobel Prizes have started on Monday. American doctors Victor Ambrose and Gary Ruvkun have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine. The two founders of machine learning, John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton, won the Physics Prize. The Nobel for Literature will be announced on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the Economics Prize will be announced on October 14. A cash prize of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) is awarded upon winning the Nobel Prize from a bequest left by the Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel. The laureates have been invited to receive their awards at a ceremony to be held on December 10, Nobel's death anniversary.
